beautiful

'This is your Life' is so beautiful to me.  There is an incredible soul sense depicted in this image.  The floating quality of the angel beings is palpable.  I perceive the thick water mist as holding the weight of the horizontal breathers - In my eyes, it looks as though the dark kiss of the blue faced angel aims to pull the green faced under his spell; and the blue of the mist is the last thing holding the green faced from sinking into the oblivion.

click for larger view

And then, there is the distinct body presence in between blue and green - a body whose face is not seen; unless you look more fractally beyond the others faces, to see an eye, fingers, eyelashes, ears and facely shapes.

To give props, my memory (which previously has been proven flawed,) tells me I sliced the angel face pieces from a KCRW fundraising flyer - what happened to the slices life once it was rubberized into Zbook is all us though!

In this spread, there is an interior presence - it is a shadow of the heart space I feel.  I believe we crystallize that experience with EKG lines in the left middle top, stickered with the mini red heart, then leading to the blood like dripping at top left.  Then there is the right page side with multiple references to cellular walls and bodies.  And look magnifying glass closely at the tiny girl figure in the top right corner - she is cut off just below the solar plexus, allowing her image focus to be the heart space - where the activity of the rest of the spread may be said to be taking place.

There is more to support this theory: reflection, life, glue glob, on and on...
~J.~

the feel

O how I love the sensual experience of ZBOOK.  The visual is paramount, scent has been added via elements such as Jennifer's blood red ink, and then there is the is the perpetual delight of touch as you experience ZBOOK in your hands.  

click for larger image

In this page,"this is your life," you see a rounded darker area beneath the word "your."  This was painted with rubber cement leaving the area tactile, coated with rubberized skin that invites you to rub.  Painting with this rather translucent substance of this glue reminds me of painting my backyard's wood fence with water when I was a little kid.  The wood gets darker in color when touched with water and I would enjoy "painting" the fence with the hose, splashes from a bucket, and my fingers.  The images would dry fairly quickly and I thought of the fence as my giant etch-a-sketch.  When painting with the rubber cement the natural fiber of the book's paper got darker too, but the darkness stayed intact as the glue dried into a top skin layer.  Crazy we haven't painted more with it in ZBOOK.  Jennifer has used glue as a medium quite a bit, such as hot gun glue, especially in her honors work at UCSB.  Hemphill, it would be great to see some pictures of those pieces and installations.  Obviously that period was pre digital picture flurry; do you have any photos of that work in print? Would be great to scan a few and hear your glue stories. Let's paint with glue together soon!

∞ ceci

6

PS(L): I also love the piece of mirrored sticker on the left top page. Also seen in "identity" above Fiona's head

this is an illusion

painting Live at LIB
photo by Ivan Oxlahun  click for large view

2 weekends ago I had the pleasure to experience and participate in Lighting in a Bottle, the marvelous and enchanting art & music festival put on by The Do Lab in southern california every May.  An amazing 4 days of music, art, performance, healing workshops, and awareness expanding seminars.  Everyone came bringing their own magic in a beautifully fierce and fearless way.  It's a serious convergence of astounding talent and vital artists.  And I'm proud to have been a part of it! I showed a piece in the Dialect festival gallery, and painted live in the Lightning-in-a-Paintcan project in which a group of artists are spread out over two field stage side areas to paint live for 3 days at the end of which the paintings are bid on and proceeds are given to Sonic Muze. 

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A festival like this one, so alive with creativity and exponential trust, creates a highly conductive field for self reflection and discovery.  And I did certainly face lot in myself and my creative process during these 3 days of painting.  I see now that I must have put a potent dose of pressure on myself, yearning greatly to produce something wonderful.  That must be why I seemed to have fallen back on many of my past established and depended on devices, which are rather systematic and controlled.  What resulted is a very nice painting, very pretty and very nice.

Painting at bidding point, to be continued...
photo by Craig Brayton   click for large view

In the "final" moment before bidding, after 3 days of painting, as much as I liked the painting just fine, I was over it already.  I knew that I needed more, more than just a "nice painting."  It hit me hard: this painting, like so many images and writings I have created in the past 13 years since college, is more symbolic than experiential.  What I have been realizing, and on this night it became sO crystal clear, is that the art I want to see in the world, espEcially from myself, are expressions that deliver gateways to EXPERIENCE and feeling, rather than simply present representations of ideas.  And the avenue that creates experience is what Jennifer honed in on way back in the day and voiced to me in 1996: story.  Story, created with moments, beats, images to hone in on & create your own visual stories from, access points for your imagination.
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It hit me hard, but goooood.  All that night I felt sO Over it! So over myself and all my "ways" and the debris of my needs for control and preparation and perfection.  But refreshingly so, none of this was out of judgment or self deprecation, as I have done with myself before on many a self-renewal occasion.  It was an experience of pure liberation from outmoded illusions and of pure excitement to create from a raw and unknown place!  An excitement from a deep inner knowing about potential potent expressions that can only be unearthed via the darkness of my uncharted creative courses, and from explorations with story.  I felt robustly new, like in new skin, full with a fresh emptiness.

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The night I returned home, my body proceeded to physically reflect this renewal with a 24 hr flu that had me purging and sweating everything out of me.  I completely surrendered and, although obviously uncomfortable, I never resisted, trusting in my body's call to release.  I awoke 2 mornings later in seriously brand new condition, in every way.  A week later today, I remain clear and alert and fearless.
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Check back for the posts on what I paint next.  And from this renewed place I'd also like to bring a fresh closure to my painting from LIB.  I'm getting in touch with the winning bidder to see if they are open to it.  If and when I do, I will post a photo of the "finished" piece.

click for larger view

I am so thankful for painting exactly what I did, so I could clearly see, right before me, all that I have been, all I want to let go of, and the enthralling beginning of what I want to create.  I must say that there is in fact one area of my art, of my life, that is and has been already aligned with the quality of free self expression, experimentation, story, and experience that I am now infusing into all areas of my creativity: ZBOOK!!! Dude, just when I thought that I was just now coming into this awareness and practice, here I hold in my hand 14 years of developing this process already, and in divine collaboration with Jennifer, in ZBOOK! Wow. And this is how our art is helping me heal and grow.  How wonderful that I cannot deny knowing how it feels to create from this beautiful and playful abyss... yes! What a gift to have access to this feeling and bring it into everything else I do. "Another reflection gone... and yet saved to ponder... on & on & on & on..."

∞ ceci

6

week eight >> "this is your life"

This is Your Life

Kiss Me Angel Quick

Lip to Lip en Mexico

I grab your hip paciando

and Cast your Shadow

on and on and on and on.

This is Your Life

You Breathe to Me

Blue Hand slapped upon my cheek

and another reflection is Gone

click for larger view

...saved to ponder on my heartbeats wake:

"permanecer sentado, por favor,"
in a rubber cement bubble,
paciando en Mexico.

I hope you've enjoyed this installment of "words" from Zbook. 

As we have explored our thoughts and processes toward presenting this ongoing zbook collaboration;

quite often, my inspiration has been to spill forth in metaphor and poetics the experiences of these spreads. 

This spread poem has been waiting on a blue post it magneted to my vision board... waiting for this release to a broader audience... and now it waits again, with a little less dust built up on its surface!

As I bid adieu once again toward sweet sleep, I leave you with this verse, which I chose to be the closing words said as a sort of prayer by the parent council at PWS this past year:

Gratitude takes three forms:

A feeling in the heart,

An expression in words,

And a giving in return.

-Arabic proverb

Thank you known and anonymous for your support and challenges,

-J.